


dust on every page

by piecesofgold



Series: sweet home alaska [1]
Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sweet Home Alabama Fusion, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Past Character Death, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofgold/pseuds/piecesofgold
Summary: No one meets their soulmate at eight years old.
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Series: sweet home alaska [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1681177
Comments: 43
Kudos: 71
Collections: sweet home alaska





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivyrobinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/gifts).



> me ?? writing a chaptered fic ?? unheard of.
> 
> title; holy ground - taylor swift
> 
> disclaimers:
> 
> • i haven’t watched the film this is based on, only know what wikipedia and youtube have told me.
> 
> • yes the fiancé is an oc bc i couldn’t justify any other man, no he won’t be showing up here beyond a phone call.
> 
> • i have no idea what the actual fox river is like beyond the population being pretty small and the peninsula it’s in holding old russian communities. so if you’re from there and reading this, apologies for probably getting everything about it wrong. i plead artistic license, your honour.
> 
> enjoy!
> 
> august 2020 edit: initially all written in march 2020, only readjusted epilogue date.

Anya hadn’t realised she kept the key.

She’d only noticed it as she was packing; there, nestled between ones to her car and work. How many times have her fingers absentmindedly rubbed over it, grooves digging into her skin?

The whole way from Paris, Anya kept pressing the pad of her thumb against the old key until the angry red welts were close to splitting and bleeding. It felt a small validation for her spur-of-the-moment decision to drop everything and book flights to a place she hasn’t stepped foot in for five years. Her phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the hour she left.

Sophie had caught her just as she was about to get in a cab, and fuelled on adrenaline Anya had explained it all as best as she could.

“And, please, Sophie, don’t tell Nonna and Aunt Olga,” she had begged, hurriedly loading her suitcase into the trunk. “Say - oh, I don’t know, there was a client emergency, they asked for me and I’ll be back in a few days.”

Sophie had frowned, grasping Anya arm. “Be careful, Nastya.” Her tone was pointed. “ _Ne vous envolez pas de la poignée_.”

 _No flying off the handle_. What she’s told on a daily basis by her grandmother, her aunt, Sophie. Anya had gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached, but she’d nodded anyway.

Somehow she doubts she’ll be able to keep that promise. Her sister used to say Anya’s temper was like a chemical fire. “Brief, devastating and utterly unstoppable,” she can still hear Tatiana sighing, frowning at Anya’s swollen knuckles scraped with limestone. “And what did the wall do to offend you this time, exactly?” Anya had most likely shrugged and stuck her lip out petulantly; she doesn’t remember why, that time. She had stopped punching walls when she was fourteen and broke two fingers.

Papa would insist she’d grow out of it eventually. If anything, Anya grew into it.

Arriving yesterday, even through the fog of jet lag she could see Fox River hasn’t changed at all - still small, still cold, still clinging to the grandeur of Russian Orthodox her parents had thought so highly of.

(Thinking about her parents makes her stomach twist painfully - they’re not why she’s here.)

Anya doubts the people have changed much, either; still close-knit and suspicious of outsiders, still as blunt and dry humoured as ever.

She would have gone into town the moment she arrived, would have gotten it all over with, but her body had other plans. Between three connecting flights and the five hour bus journey from Anchorage, she’d been awake over forty hours. The most she had managed to do was drag herself to the motel on the outskirts of town, eat a lukewarm bowl of soup, take half an Imovane and pass out.

Breakfast in the morning feels unthinkable, dread sour in her stomach, but she forces down half a bagel anyway. Finally looking at her phone, she sends two carefully worded texts to Aunt Olga and James assuring them she’s fine and not to worry, she’ll be home soon. It’s past midday when she finally musters the courage to leave.

Anya had almost forgotten how cold Alaska gets. It’s polarising from France’s familiar warmth, icy wind whipping through the coat she’s struggling to close with ungloved fingers.

“Should have taken a damn cab,” she mutters bitterly, securing the scarf over her face.

She wants nothing more than to walk back to the dingy motel and collapse onto the bed, but anxiety and anger keep propelling her forwards.

The old street is a time machine - one step in and suddenly she’s eighteen again. Phantom arms picking her up as she shrieks, laughing, to be put back down. A kiss pressed to her neck, a hidden smile.

Anya blinks, the memory melting into the snow beneath her feet.

She doesn’t even need to look for the house, legs taking her there before she has the chance to hesitate. She opts not to try the front door - he’s probably changed the locks, anyway.

He hasn’t painted anything over, she silently notes.

Just as she remembers, there’s no padlock on the back gate; muscle memory takes over, one hard shove with her shoulder and she’s in. She doesn’t bother closing it behind her - she’s not expecting to be here long.

The sight of him almost stops Anya in her tracks. Sat on the back porch in a familiar flannel shirt, headphones over his ears, laptop balanced on his knees. She used to berate him for getting too lost in work, would try to make him stay indoors and out of the cold. It was too claustrophobic for him, for his brain that went a thousand miles an hour.

He’s as handsome as the day she left.

Stomping that very thought out immediately, she marches up towards him, heart jackhammering under her coat.

He finally looks up, and for a second his face goes slack with shock, before he manages to compose himself and shove the headphones to rest around his neck as she comes to stand in front of him.

“Can I help you?” Are the first cool words Dmitry Sudayev says to her in half a decade. He hasn’t even bothered standing up, and if Anya hadn’t been looking she’d have missed the enraged look in his eyes.

“ _Help_ me?” Anya seethes, all promises of self-control gone. Yanking the envelope from her bag, she slams it down beside him. “How’s about a divorce?”

* * *

When they were young, Dmitry played games with Anya and her sisters.

Anya liked the reckless ones, the older they got. Like standing in the road and only moving at the last second before a car could hit them.

The last time they played it, her sisters weren’t there - she must have been about fifteen, a stolen bottle of her father’s whiskey clutched in her hand - Dmitry had yanked her back with an arm around her waist, panic in his voice when he set her down as the truck roared past them.

“Jesus, Anyok,” he’d breathed, hand cold on her cheek. “You need to be more careful.”

“Why?” Anya had giggled, half drunk and full of adrenaline. “I’ve got you for that.”

Dmitry rolled his eyes and muttered something about getting her home, never should have let her convince him out again. He was seventeen and more cautious than Anya ever thought she could be.

Now, she doesn’t quite know how the roles have shifted.

Dmitry snorts, incredulous, slamming his laptop shut. When he finally stands, he towers over Anya - just another thing that irritates her.

“Hello, honey, how was your trip?” He deadpans sarcastically.

Anya bristles. “Don’t _honey_ me,” she snaps, hurrying to follow him into the house. It’s just another shock, standing in the kitchen - he hadn’t changed a thing, not the colour of the walls, the decorative tiles over the sink.

One glance through to the living room confirms that the furniture, the furniture she picked out, is still all there.

As if she never left.

The one thing she did leave, mutely picking up dried dishes and slamming cupboard doors shut.

Up close, he _does_ look older, and that shouldn’t surprise her as much as it does. He’s gotten bigger, more serious, an unfamiliar air of maturity about him. Little like the cocky twenty-two year old she last saw.

Anya forces the charge of memories away, pulls a tag of skin off her lips. “I’m only here for the signature.”

“Oh, is that all, princess?” The old endearment seems to slip out without him realising, if his abrupt blinking is anything to go by. He turns, hands gripping the ceramic countertop. “Where the hell have you been, Anya?”

Anya’s hand tightens on the back of a chair. “You know where.”

“Like hell I did.” Dmitry’s voice rises, every muscle in his body pulled tight. “You just come swanning back after _five years_ -”

“I’m engaged, Dmitry.”

Silence drops instantly. Anya refuses to look away even when he does.

Dmitry clears his throat, swallowing. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“Who is…” he trails off, looks as if he regrets asking.

“His name is James, he’s the head of a law firm, and before you ask,” Anya exhales, “he doesn’t know, which is why I need -”

“Of course he doesn’t.” Dmitry cuts her off with a scoff. “Suppose that makes me the ‘other woman’.”

He’s goading her, she knows, but anger flares in her chest anyway. “Will you just sign the damn papers?” She asks despairingly. “A few signatures and I will be out of your life for good.”

“And that’s _so_ different from last time.”

“That’s not fair. And you’ve had _plenty_ chance to sign all the other papers I’ve sent -”

“Anastasia.” His gaze is hard when he finally meets hers again. Anya’s chest tightens - only her grandmother calls her that these days. “I’m not signing divorce papers.”

Anya closes her eyes and counts to five, nails digging into wood. “Might I ask why?”

“Because I enjoy pissing you off.” Dmitry pushes away from the counter, gathering his laptop and a jacket slung over a chair. Anya frowns.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Leaving. You should recognise the gesture.”

“Dmitry, for God's sake!” Anya yells, all intents of a civil conversation gone. “Just sign the papers so I can go home!”

“ _This_ was your home once,” Dmitry bites, keys jangling in his hands. “Maybe it’d do some good to remember that.”

It’s a low blow and they both know it. Anya can’t stand him. “The only reason you won’t sign them is because I want you to!”

Dmitry holds a hand up in mock surrender, opens the front door with the other. “And what can we do about that, princess?”

The door slams, and Anya is left alone in the very house she’s been haunting for five years.

For a moment, it’s as if she can feel her younger self with her, just out of reach - young and immature and on the verge of her stability being shattered.

 _Go away_ , Anya tells the ghost. She doesn’t have time for reminiscing.

Fluttering her hands around, she finds a drawer full of notebooks, and has to bite back a sudden smile. Collecting stationary, a habit neither of them grew out of.

Tearing a page out of the most plain-looking one, Anya writes her cell number and where she was staying - she resists the urge to write _when you’re done having a tantrum_ beside it. No point in putting him in a worse mood.

She leaves the way she came, knowing he won’t have remembered to lock the gate. Out of long ingrained Alaskan habit, she inhales sharply - _smells like snow,_ she can suddenly hear her father saying. Anya can see him, driving the family truck with Alexei in the passenger seat, driving into town to stock up for winter.

Alexei would giggle, pulling a face. _You can’t smell snow, Papa._

Anya’s eyes burn, shaking the wisps from her head. She should leave, should go back to her room, should call her grandmother and aunts - and James.

Sweet, courteous, distracted James, who’s never asked a thing about her past and doesn’t push to be told - the most wonderful thing about him. He’s a passive participant in her life, and it suits Anya just fine.

It’s too early to sleep, so she ends up staring up at the motel ceiling for hours, tossing her phone from hand to hand, cycle of conversations she’d forced herself to have running through her head.

Anya tries desperately not to think of the sorrow in her grandmother's voice when she finally admitted where she is, or the perfectly wonderful fiancé telling her take all the time she needs, or the man a few blocks away with brown eyes that always seem to look straight into her soul, who can rile her up like nobody else, and who refuses to stay in the past.

* * *

It snowed on their wedding day. Anya remembers that most.

Her borrowed wedding dress was too tight, Lily’s clumsy stitching biting into the skin of her back. Dmitry had brushed snowflakes out of her hair with shaky hands as they were stood before the minister, his father's grey suit too big on him even then.

The particulars of what they had said to one another are lost to Anya now - she recalls Lily’s tears, Vlad’s uncertain smile, Dmitry sweeping her up into his arms with a grin that could have lit up the entire town.

Later, Sophie would say their marriage was akin to an occupational hazard. Her therapist called it a trauma response.

Anya still isn’t sure what it was. She was eighteen, in a seemingly permanent state of limbo, and Dmitry was the only good thing in her life. At the time, it made sense.

Olga would have scolded her for being so impulsive. Tatiana would have scoffed and said it was inevitable. Maria would have rolled her eyes and told her she could do better. Alexei would have been jumping up and down with the prospect of having Dmitry for a brother-in-law. Anya doesn’t want to know what her parents would have thought.

Nicholas and Alexandra Romanov were a reclusive, old-money couple who had moved to Alaska from Russia due to political unrest - or so they claimed whenever anyone asked. The big old house at the foot of the mountain was where they made a home, homeschooling the children and keeping most of the townsfolk at arm's length. It isn’t wholly surprising that Anya and her siblings had rebelled when they could and clung so tightly to the few local friends they had.

Anya was eight years old, in town during the rare occasion her mother opted to take all four of her daughters. Alexei had thrown a tantrum over not being allowed to come, but his legs had been bad again and everyone was on edge. The anxiety running through the whole house was choking; Anya had welcomed the offer of brief escape.

Maria had instigated a game of hide-and-seek while their mother drifted in and out of stores. With Olga’s voice in her ears counting to twenty, Anya had grabbed the hand of a boy skulking nearby and begged him to help her hide.

“I would have done anything you asked in that moment,” Dmitry murmured into her hair one night.

“Dima.” Anya brushed a hand over his cheek, doubtful. “You were only ten.”

His eyes had crinkled at the sides. “Didn’t matter. Second you took my hand, I was a goner.”

No one meets their soulmate at eight years old. Anya’s certain of that now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i call this one "info dump disguised as plot".
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS:  
> mention of murder & past suicide attempt, some trauma discussion.

Summer in Alaska isn’t much of a summer at all; Anya preferred to call it a warm winter. It was supposed to be her last summer there, anyway - she had been due to start college in the fall, finally able to follow her sisters out.

By mid-July, snow had already begun dusting the far-off mountains. Firewood was collected and an inordinate amount of food was stored in the deep-freeze.

“You would think they were preparing for the apocalypse,” Olga sighed from the window, watching their father haul meat and fish from the truck bed.

“Olya, have you forgotten already?” Beside her, Maria feigned anguish, hand over her heart. “My, you’ve gone native! A true Californian!” She shrieked when Olga pulled a lock of her hair. “Oh, I’m sorry, _Doctor_ Olya.”

Olga pulled a face. “Not quite yet.”

“More than can be said for you, Masha,” Anya piped up, not bothering to open her eyes where she lay in front of the open fire, Tatiana’s fingers thoughtlessly carding through her hair. “How long is this gap year, exactly?” She cracked open an eyelid just to see her sister scowl at her.

“Nastya.” Tatiana’s soft tone was contrary to the warning look she leveled Anya with over her tablet, probably reading over another initiative from their grandmother - the grooming for a position at their design business hadn’t exactly been subtle.

Anya dutifully bit her tongue.

Alexei had come bounding in moments later, insisting Anya play a with him. He’d been a ball of restless energy all summer, clingier than usual knowing his favourite sister would be leaving him soon.

“Not tonight, Lyosha,” Anya groaned.

“ _Stasia_.” Alexei pouted unhappily.

“‘M _tired_ , why don’t you ask Andrei instead?”

Maria interrupted before Alexei could get upset. “I’ll play with you, sunbeam. Show me.”

Anya wishes that was the last memory she had of them, quiet and warm and safe, listening to Alexei and Maria’s murmuring, Tatiana’s petting making her drowsy. She would hurry to eat, later, would wave off her mother’s call of _be careful_ and Olga’s _don’t stay out too late_.

She doesn’t know if she kissed any of them goodbye, can’t remember what the last thing she said to them was, if she told them she loved them. In the moment, it hadn’t mattered, hadn’t been important.

Anya hadn’t known it was the last time.

She had met Katya at the end of the path, waving a bottle of cheap vodka, and any concerns Anya had vanished.

* * *

(They told her afterwards she’d been found almost a mile from the house, hypothermic, in shock, covered in scratches and bruises. Apparently she’d run through the surrounding trees until her legs had given out. Screaming had finally alerted someone.

Anya doesn’t remember running, the cold or the pain. When she had finally got home, after she found the blood splattered across floorboards and drenched into carpet, everything went dark.)

* * *

The massacre became infamous, considered to be one of the only engrossing things about the tiny fishing town.

New Russian loyalist, the police told her. Angry young men who believed Nicholas Romanov hadn’t answered for the crimes that had made him flee his home country. Caught within a week trying to board a flight from Vancouver to Moscow.

The Romanov house was eventually torn down on Maria Feodorova’s orders, when she was made aware of a petition from some online sleuths wanting to turn it into a museum.

The first place Anya thinks of when someone says the word _home_ , gone in an instant.

There’s a memorial plaque on the site now, apparently - Anya’s never seen it, has no desire too. Whenever the town is brought up in casual conversation, for whatever reason, it’s usually quickly followed by someone else asking _here, ain’t that where those rich folk were killed?_

When she first moved to Paris, Anya made a point never to tell strangers exactly where she came from, nor her last name. Most times, people didn’t even recognise her face that had been splashed across the front page of newspapers and tabloid magazines for weeks on end, only beginning to dwindle after a year.

Paris was where she reinvented herself.

It isn’t some gory tale to tell over a bar or campfire, not for her. It’s not a tale at all.

* * *

Two weeks, Anya was in hospital - first for the hypothermia and injuries, then on suicide watch. That fortnight is a haze of numb exhaustion, broken only by the shouts and alarms blaring when they saw blood on her wrists.

More than a few reporters tried to breach her room, beaten off by Dmitry, Vlad and Lily - who protected her for as long as they could from the worst of the details, who point blank refused to indulge the media or any tabloid gossip and conspiracy theories that _Anya_ had somehow been involved in the deaths.

That’s all she was for months; Anastasia Romanov, sole survivor of the Fox River massacre and heiress to a massive fortune.

(Every memory she has of her family is secondary to what she found that night, _how_ she found them, no matter how much time passes.)

Anya just wanted to disappear, to hide and sleep forever. She was hollowed out, the foundation of who she was ripped and torn from the seams - she wanted to have died with her family. Should have.

Dmitry would only leave her side at the gentle insistence of Vlad and Lily. In truth, there were nights Anya would jerk awake crying, and Dmitry fumbling to hold her was all that made her feel human.

“I’m here,” he breathed as she sobbed into his shoulder. “I’m right here, I’ve got you.”

He never told her everything was okay, or that she was, because they both knew neither was true.

* * *

Dmitry stared at her as if she’d grown a second head when she asked him. In hindsight, she couldn’t blame him. Those months had been a cycle of nightmares and crying and days without eating or even getting out of bed.

“What?”

“You heard me.” Anya stuck her chin out, defiant.

Blinking like an owl experiencing hayfever, Dmitry closed his hanging jaw. “You want to get _married_.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.” Anya twisted her hands together, feeling ridiculous.

“I’m not! I’m not.” Coming to stand in front of her, he gently pried her fists open, ran a thumb over the half-crescent moon indents on her palm. “You’re not stupid, Anyok, but - that’s a very big step, so soon after…” he trailed off.

Anya swallowed, upset. She still hadn’t wanted to talk about it. “Do you love me?” She asked instead.

Surprised coloured Dmitry’s face. “You know I do.”

She squeezed his hands hard. “Then what else do we need, Dima?”

His face had softened when he kissed her, an affirmative.

They both thought the logic of having _one good thing_ was enough.

They were far too young.

Their marriage wasn’t bad **,** she knows it wasn’t. It was _nice_ \- they were happy. For a while, she could be someone she wasn’t. Anya thought it was what she wanted, thought _he_ was what she needed. A fantasy.

There was just too much unsaid, and never a willingness to have a bad day. Dmitry loved her more than she believes she deserved, now - but sometimes he felt like more of a caretaker than her husband.

Two years. She played Anastasia Sudayev for two years before the bubble of protection she built around herself finally burst - she bought a one way ticket to Paris, refusing to look back.

* * *

Recovery isn’t linear. The one single event of her family's killers being convicted didn’t bring her any peace. Marrying Dmitry didn’t fix anything, no matter how much she once loved him, how much he loved her.

Anya’s never been very good at admitting when she needs help, preferring to push all her issues aside and throw herself into a distraction.

The only thing she appears to be any good at is running away.


	3. Chapter 3

Despite still being half jet lagged, Anya can’t sleep, which is nothing new. She hasn’t slept well in a long time.

Six or seven years ago, maybe, she was able to sleep through the night so long as - as someone else was sleeping beside her.

Well, there’s just another thing she won’t be unpacking.

The sleepy receptionist at the front desk shot Anya a questioning look when she’d slinked past close to midnight, returning the awkward wave she offered. Sat in the safety of the tiny rental she’d finally called for, Anya presses her forehead against the steering-wheel and wonders, for what feels like the millionth time, what the hell she’s doing here.

* * *

Fox River got under her skin far too easily. 

It’s a itch, constant ever since she’d landed in Anchorage, ever since the bus has pulled up to the station. Everywhere she looks, every building, every street corner, every open field, every glimpse over the lake is a memory, another chink in the armour she’s worked so hard to build.

There: Alexei slipped on a patch of ice and was in a wheelchair for months.

There: Anya smoked her first and last cigarette with Marfa and Katya, gagging viciously, caught by Katya’s big brother Viktor.

There: Dunya’s hushed tone telling Anya that Polly _kissed_ her, what did that mean now?

There: Anya’s knees bracketing Dmitry’s waist, his unsure hands on her hips, his mouth on hers for the first time.

Anya pulls into a parking lot sharply, slumps in her seat with her face buried in her hands.

If she stays too long, this town will suffocate her.

* * *

Meyers is the sort of place people around here can get groceries along with a new couch, camping supplies, decorative vases and visit the bank in one trip. When they first moved into the house, she and Dmitry may as well have had a residency in the store. Once, he’d tried to carry a double mattress all the way to the truck himself, Anya laughing the whole time until he admitted defeat.

“I can take it!” She can still hear him insisting, face set stubbornly.

Anya had bit the inside of her cheek to keep from giggling, pressed her fingers into the small of his back. “Whatever you say, honey.”

Staring blankly at the aisles now, she grabs a pack of smokva and sweet soya bars - more out of habit than wanting. Alexei used to love them. James is always berating her for hoarding things she doesn’t need or like just because her siblings enjoyed them. She still buys the design magazine Tatiana read, the cream Olga used on her hands that got constantly dried out at the clinic she worked at.

Half for justification, she picks up crampons for her shoes and an iced coffee. The bored teenager who rings the items up doesn’t look at Anya with any recognition - probably too young to remember the media frenzy. A small consolation.

Driving through the back roads for the next two hours, Anya goes over plan after plan to convince Dmitry to sign the divorce papers, each more extreme than the next the more exhausted she feels.

She comes up empty with all of them, because the basic fact of the matter is - Dmitry can be as stubborn as her on her worst day. Maybe Anya should have given him some sort of warning before showing up on his doorstep, maybe she should have expected him to react the way he did, but between the engagement and all the previous times her lawyers have sent him the papers to no avail, it’s not like he gave many options.

Maybe she just doesn’t know him as well as she used to.

She doesn’t finish the coffee. The soya bars are crushed at the bottom of her bag, untouched.

Back in her room, her cell buzzes with a text from an unknown number. Anya snorts when she realises who sent it.

 _You should go see Lily,_ her soon-to-be-ex-husband has typed curtly. _if you plan on sticking around._

* * *

Anya does not want to see Vlad and Lily Popov. At all.

The last time she had seen either of them was the night she left Dmitry.

She had gone to the old Malevsky-Malevitch house on Dalina Creek Road in a frenzy, knowing half her belongings from her parents' house were there, including her passport. Anya felt sick to her stomach when Lily tried to console and reason with her, tried to make her stay. Vlad had finally lightly squeezed his wife's shoulder and beckoned her away, and it had taken everything in Anya not to burst into tears at the understanding on his face.

She hadn’t wanted to speak to anyone that night, not even the Popovs. The people who had practically saved her life.

Anya has spent the last five years trying to shed old regrets, but she will always regret what she did to Vlad and Lily. Whatever faults she and Dmitry tenaciously chose to ignore had nothing to do with the older couple. Neither of them had been a part of Anya’s marriage, as she had become more and more distorted until she no longer recognised herself. They had embraced and protected her when she most needed it, never asking for a thing in return.

Knee jumping involuntarily beneath the dashboard, Anya wonders how much Vlad and Lily hate her now. She ran out on their nephew, as they considered him. Ran out on _them._ After all they had done for her, she abandoned them, and never even called to explain why.

There’s a small hill behind the house that local kids used to hike up and camp, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis, probably still do. Anya can recall one weekend when she was twelve or thirteen with her parents and sisters and brother, and a boy who still hadn’t quite grown into his growth spurt, hands still sticky with s’mores racing up and down the icy grass.

It’s the ghosts she follows to the front door of a red house, the echo of laughter that makes her raise a hand to knock on the door.

It opens, and time ceases to exist just as it had when she had seen Dmitry. Lily has always been comely, carrying the same Russian pride as Anya’s parents. Stern most of the time, harsh when she wants to be, loving to the few people in her circle.

She’s older, looks more weary, but she’s still Lily.

The look on her face, blinking at Anya, mirrors that of her nephews before she collects herself.

“Anastasia,” she says in surprised delight. “As I live and breathe.”

Anya smiles weakly. “Hey, Lily.”

* * *

The sitting room is just as she remembers it; a mismatch of Alaskan comforts and Russian splendour, white and gold and blue, photos of Vlad and Lily and Dmitry scattered across. A framed one of Anya and Dmitry’s wedding tucked behind a glass sculpture on the fireplace, like they didn’t have the heart to hide it away.

Lily makes tea with a meagre attempt at small talk, politely asks after her grandmother's health and Sophie, how the business is going. It’s less awkward than Anya had thought it would be.

“Where’s Vlad?” Anya asks, accepting the offered cup.

Lily’s face falls. “Oh, dear, he passed away.”

The saucer rattles in Anya’s hand, tea scalding her wrist. “He - when?” She blurts, shock tightening her throat.

“Two years ago now. His heart gave out.” Lily pauses seeing Anya’s bewildered look. “Mitya didn’t tell you?”

Anya swallows painfully. “No,” she says, voice hoarse even to her own ears. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course not, you weren't here.” Lily’s tone is mild as she sips her tea - it’s not an accusation, it’s a fact.

Shame makes Anya’s eyes fill, and she wills the urge to cry away. “Lily, I’m so sorry.” She doesn’t know what she’s apologising for - Vlad dying, not being there, not reaching out for five years to explain why. All of it.

Lily just nods, sets her cup down, a gesture ending that particular conversation thread. “Now, let’s not waste time on niceties, shall we, Anastasia? Why exactly are you here?”

Anya’s hand clenches around her tea, burning her palm. “I need Dmitry to sign divorce papers.”

Lily doesn’t even look surprised. “And how is that going?”

Something about her tone sets Anya’s teeth on edge. “He won’t. He’d rather punish me for it instead.”

“Well, are you surprised?”

Anya stares at her. “I’m engaged to someone else, Lily, what do you expect me to do? It shouldn’t have ever got to this point, and -” she catches herself. “He's not my husband,” she says, quieter. “He’s just someone I haven’t seen in five years.”

“Still.” Lily holds a hand up when Anya opens her mouth to argue further. "You leave him with no explanation and show up the same way, dear, what did _you_ expect? To make a demand of the man you left and get everything you want just like that?" Lily snaps her fingers. “I know you’re not that stupid, Nastya.”

The sting of her words makes Anya look away, no matter how much she deserves to hear them.

“He followed you, you know.”

Anya glances up, frowning. “What?”

“Dmitry. He went to Paris after you,” Lily tells her casually, opposed to the weight of her statement.

Anya’s almost certain she’s mishearing. “No, he didn’t.”

Lily just looks at her over the rim of her tea. “The very first thing he did was book a flight out. Spent a week there, came back with nothing, no news. Poor boy’s not been the same since.”

White noise rings in Anya’s ears. “Dmitry followed me to Paris.” she repeats, stunned.

Lily stands up, taking the cup and saucer from Anya’s hands. “Darling, that boy would have followed you anywhere.”

* * *

Anya never knew Valerie Sudayev, dead long before she and Dmitry crossed paths, and Constantine Sudayev is a fogged memory of big, toughened hands that were only ever gentle and a smile inherited by his son.

But she remembers acutely how devastated Dmitry was when he died.

Twelve years old in a rented black suit, he didn’t cry through the whole service, stubbornly staring straight ahead, Vlad’s solemn hand on his thin shoulder. Afterwards at the wake, Anya found him hiding in the attic, crawled over to sit beside him, arms pressed together.

“You don’t have to pretend for me,” she’d told him softly, tugging at the sleeve of his blazer. He’d turned to her, eyes shining, and spent the next hour weeping into her skirt.

Mama had been furious with Anya for ruining her dress, but Anya hadn’t cared.

Vladimir Popov’s grave is a simple black headstone, his name carved in both English and Cyrillic. Staring at it is a shaky, surreal feeling. In Anya’s memory, Vlad had been such a bold character that it’s almost odd to think of something as simple as a heart attack could take him away.

She wonders what she had been doing the day he died. Maybe she was in a meeting arguing with her Aunts over investors. Maybe she was chuckling at something James had said while in line for coffee.

All Anya knows for certain is that she had not been here.

His grave inevitably leads her to the ones she’s been avoiding for the better half of a decade - since the funerals, Dmitry holding her hand the whole day and sometimes squeezing so hard she thought her circulation would cut off. It's all that kept her upright.

A tomb had felt excessive even then, too impersonal, but Anya hadn’t exactly been in a state to protest her grandmother's wishes.

The rules are different when you have money, she supposes.

It’s not so pristine anymore, weather beaten with overgrowth crawling up the sides. Dead bouquets of flowers and wreaths lay at the iron gate - no one has been here for a long while, not bothered to keep it clean.

 _Mama would not be happy_ , she suddenly thinks. It’d make her laugh if tears were not already frozen on her face.

“I’m sorry,'' Anya whispers to no one, trailing a trembling hand over the marble bearing her family name. Sorry for never visiting, sorry for running away, sorry for not being there that night, for trying so hard to forget them.

 _Give me a sign_ , she pleads inwardly. _Tell me something, please_. But all she hears is the wind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shortest chapter, friends. promise it'll all kick off soon.
> 
> thank you to chris for giving me dunya's last name!

Anya’s face is puffy by the time she reaches the bistro, all cried out and miserable. She’d love to be literally anywhere else, but the thought of going back to the motel only makes her feel worse.

It hasn’t changed at all, although one glance behind the bar tells her ownership has switched hands. The Nevsky is a staple of her youth, as it had been for her sisters and every other person her age - an inevitable fate for the only twenty-four hour bar in a small town that never cards the high school kids, because the owner knows them and their parents, so what was the harm in letting them indulge a little?

The people even look the same, faces and stories she once knew as well as her own. Most are third or fourth generation Russian-American, with families that had drifted from the Old Believer villages. She could glance around and pinpoint anyone whose father ran the church in Voznesenka, whose grandmother still lived in Kachemak Selo, who had gone to school in Razdolna. Everyone is dressed like a stereotypical lumberjack, chequered shirts and duffles and XtraTuf boots. It makes her head spin.

Anya hauls herself onto a creaking stool at the end of the bar and drops her chin in her hands. It’s barely three p.m and the day has already been too much, a dull throbbing in her temples.

She’s been trying to handle their divorce in the easiest way possible for years, and the last thing she wants to do is to drag the lawyers in for a long-haul battle - and then there would be no shielding James from it. None of her Paris circle, excluding her extended family, know she’s married, and if Dmitry insists on making their divorce a messy affair then there would be no avoiding doing it the hard way.

Anya lets her forehead fall to the wood, groaning.

“You look like you could use this.”

Something cool brushes the side of her hand, and Anya peers up.

The man behind the bar doesn’t even look mildly put out by her sitting in front of him - and that’s an odd thought in itself. She had never taken him for the bar-owning type.

Anya straightens up, takes a gulp of the offered whiskey and club soda. “Vaganov,” she greets dryly.

The corner of Gleb’s mouth lifts briefly. “Sudayev.” He holds a hand up when she glares at him. “Apologies - Romanov.”

They’ve never got on, really, both preferring to keep one another at arms length. Anya is remembering why.

Anya flicks her tongue behind her teeth, tries to ignore the annoyance burrowing under her skin. “Have you been talking to my husband, by any chance?” He and Dmitry had always been reluctant friends, collateral of running in the same small circles.

Gleb shrugs, loading empty glasses to the side into the washer beneath the counter. “He may have mentioned something to my wife.”

Instinctively, Anya glances at his hand, eyeing the gold band on his finger. “Marfa finally made an honest man out of you, then.”

“Something like that.”

“She can do better,” another voice chimes in, and Anya almost gives herself whiplash looking around. Dunya Volkov grins at her, tray of empty dishes under her arm that she slides over to Gleb.

The past hits Anya hard in the chest seeing one of her best friends for the first time in five years. “Holy shit.”

Dunya’s _pregnant_.

“Heya, Anyok.”

* * *

Anya cackles loudly, soda sloshing over the side of her fourth glass, Gleb obediently reaching over to wipe down the sticky counter. Anya feels lighter than she has all day.

“Oh, how is Polly?” She asks, fingers resting on Dunya’s wrist.

The other woman smiles. “Good, we’re both good.” Her hand rests on her stomach. “We tried to send you an invite to the wedding, but…” she trails off, an awkward silence falling until she clears her throat. “ _Paris_ , Anya - what’s it like?”

Anya waves a hand. “Busy, beautiful, just - it’s like another world, Dun, you’d love it.”

Dunya exhales dreamily, eyes faraway. "Sounds too exciting for me."

“ _No_.” Even Anya’s surprised as how sharp it comes out. “It’s - this town, Dun, it has you thinking you don’t deserve _more_ , deserve _better_.”

“No, honey.” Dunya pulls her hand away gently, looking sympathetic. “I like this town. I like my life."

 _No, you don’t._ Anya thinks but holds her tongue, draining the rest of her drink. _You haven’t seen enough to believe that._

Dunya eyes the empty class, makes a cut-off motion to Gleb, keeping quiet watch over them. “I think you’ve had enough, Anyok.”

Anya’s about to protest when the doors suddenly crash open, cold air and rowdy men spilling in.

“Dun,” Gleb calls.

Dunya pats Anya’s hand, slipping behind the bar. For the first time, Anya realises how heavy her head feels, pressing the heels of her hand over her eyes, letting the noise of the bar wash over.

A conversation nearby catches her attention, Gleb serving beers to the arrivals.

“Aye, the reds were running good up the creek,” one of them is saying excitedly. “Pity the Sudayev boats weren’t out.”

“Not even The Val?” Gleb’s asking.

“Nope, poor thing was tied to _The Sunbeam_.”

Anya’s blood runs cold. “Sunbeam?” She’s asking before she can stop herself, leaning forward. “Did you say Sudayev’s boats? Dmitry?”

They all look at her, undeterred. “Yeah, you know him?”

“He’s -” Anya pauses, licks her lips hastily. “What are the boats called?”

“Anya,” Gleb warns in the softest tone she’s ever heard from him.

“That’s one!” Someone pipes up, starting to list off names. “ _Anastasia, Sunbeam_ \- tiny thing, that one, but strong as oak - _, Popov, Valerie_ and _Constantine_ and - what’s that lettered one, O-T something -”

Her whole body is shaking. “OTMA?” She asks, barely above a whisper.

“You do know them!” One of the men says brightly, then frowns seeing Anya’s face. “Here, do I know you from somewhere?”

Anya thinks she’s going to be sick.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...hell of a week, right?
> 
> might be the last chapter for quite a while because my ability to write when anxious isn't great!
> 
> sending you all love. stay safe. look out for one another.

He’s wearing his father's old jacket when he comes to get her.

Gleb must have called him, if their nod of acknowledgement is anything to go by. Anya stumbles to stand, head swimming, immediately caught by strong hands, the owner of which sighs into her hair.

“Nastya, come on,” Dmitry mutters. He doesn’t even sound annoyed, just tired. Tired of her, tired of it all.

He’s never called her Nastya before.

For a second, Anya allows herself to be held, Dmitry’s hands steady on her hips. Too familiar.

“Let me go,” she pleads.

He does, and she hates how much she misses his touch as soon as it’s gone.

Walking proves to be a challenge, finding the door even harder. She hears Dmitry exhale through his teeth, and stiffens when he wraps an arm around her waist.

“Still can’t hold your whiskey,” he says quietly.

“You could never keep up with me,” Anya retorts, too easily. Cold air hits her face, shakes her back to the present. She takes a deep breath, gripping his wrist. “I don’t need your help.”

She doesn’t even need to look at him to know he’s rolling his eyes. “Of course you don’t.”

It’s cold, she’s drunk and Dmitry is warm; those are the excuses she runs through as to why she’s leaning against him, letting him hold her and help her into the passenger seat of his truck - dark blue, not the battered red one Vlad bought him as a wedding present.

Years melt away as he reaches over to tuck the tartan blanket over her legs, a habit ingrained in his bones. The only difference being the overbearing hush between them instead of giggles and shushes and fingertips pressed into skin.

Anya’s hand twitches in an effort to not brush stray strands of hair from his forehead. “I didn’t ask you to come.”

Dmitry’s shoulders slump when he looks up at her, eyes reflecting amber in the streetlights. “You never do.”

She stares at him while he drives, wondering who he is. Who he’s made himself into in her absence.

 _That boy would have followed you anywhere_ , Lily had said.

Dmitry followed her to Paris and never said a word. 

Dmitry came back to this tiny town and kept building his boats, naming them after people he’d loved and lost - his parents, Vlad, her sisters and brother. Her.

Anya wonders if that means she died to him, too.

Still half caught in the past, she suddenly realises he’s spoken to her. “What?”

Dmitry’s eyes stay on the road. “Where did you go today, anyway?”

“Lily's.” Anya swallows. “The graveyard.”

“Oh.” His voice is flat, unsurprised.

Anya clears her throat. “Lily told me - Vlad...” she trails off seeing his hands tighten on the wheel.

“Yeah,” he says tightly, still not looking at her.

“I'm sorry.” How many times has she said that today?

“Don’t, alright?” Dmitry’s voice cracks, old hurts seeping through. “Just - don’t.”

Anya wraps her arms around her knees, squeezing her eyes shut.

* * *

She shifts in his bed, groggy with sleep. The digital clock reads three nineteen a.m.

He’s sat up beside her, distractedly stroking her hair, staring into the dark of his room.

“What is it?” Anya mumbles, curling further under the comforter. Vlad turns the thermostat down during the night and Dmitry’s room has always been the coldest, his bed piled with throw blankets.

Dmitry blinks down at her. “Nothing,” he whispers. “Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

Anya hums, rolls onto her other side to let him settle behind her, warm against her back. Dmitry kisses the curve of her neck, arms secure around her waist.

The second before Anya drifts back off, his lips on her neck, she thinks she hears him say, “I love you.”

* * *

The truck lurching to a stop jerks Anya out of the half-forgotten memory, blinking blearily at the house beyond the windshield.

She’d half expected him to drop her off at the motel. He’s taken her home, instead.

His home. Their home. A vacuum of past and present.

Dmitry doesn’t say a word even when she’s sat at the counter gradually sobering up, silently making lemon-herb salmon toast. Anya chooses not to overthink him still knowing her favourite obscure drunk food.

His silence is worse than anything he could be saying, warily watching her pick at the food.

“Gleb owns a bar,” Anya breaks the painful hush with the first thing she can think of. “With Dunya.”

Dmitry just nods, leaning forward on his elbows. “Marfa’s idea. They -” he stops suddenly, clearly uncomfortable with giving up privy information to her. He picks at a loose thread on his red shirt. “She wanted to keep the kids here.”

Anya chooses not to be surprised anymore by the revelations of her childhood friends getting up and married and starting families while she was away. Time hadn’t frozen just because she’d left.

Pushing away the plate of crumbs, Anya rests her chin on clenched fists. “You should have told me about Vlad.”

Dmitry’s making a noise of dissent and pushing himself away from her before she’s even finished the sentence. “Why, exactly?”

Anya frowns. “I had a right to know, he was - something to me, too.”

Dmitry scoffs, not meeting her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

Something white hot flares though Anya. “Excuse me?”

“You walked out,” Dmitry starts, straightening up. “And still expected to be, what, kept in the loop of everyone’s lives? Believe it or not, this place got on just fine without you.”

Anya stares at him, stunned at the sudden anger. “I know that. I do. But - it’s not like any of you tried keeping me in the loop anyway!”

Here it is, the fight that’s been building since the moment he raised his head to her in the back garden.

“No, _you_ left, Anya,” Dmitry spits. “In the middle of the night, out of fucking _nowhere_ , not even a word - _you left._ You chose to run away to Paris and cut us all off, not the other way around. Don’t get that twisted.”

Anya suddenly finds herself standing. “You think it was that easy?!”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ve had it _so hard_ living it up in Paris.” The sarcasm cuts like a knife between them.

“I left because you wouldn’t!” Anya’s voice rings off the kitchen walls, too loud. “Fuck, Dmitry, we were a - nuclear disaster waiting to happen, playing _house_ together, how could you not see that?!”

“And what about _James_?” Dmitry throws the name in her face, a weapon. When did he come to stand so close to her?

Anya takes a step back. “Don’t you dare bring him into this.”

“Why not?” Dmitry asks, almost with a sneer. “Because you honestly think you and _him_ will be perfect - even though you’ve failed to mention in _five years_ that you’re already married?”

“We are _barely_ married!”

“Hell of a basis for a second marriage, princess!”

They’re both shouting, circling the island until he’s towering over her - a staple in every memory she has of him.

(Have his eyes always had a little green in them? In her mind, they’ve always been homely brown. Maybe just another echo she’s distorted to fit her own narrative.)

Dmitry stares down at her, jaw set hard. “Do you even love him?” He asks, quiet. “Really?”

Anya refuses to back down. “You don’t get to ask me that.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because we were a sham!” Anya shrieks, last of her control slipping. “I married you because it was _safe_! _You_ were safe! Jesus, Dima.” The old nickname slips out without her consent; Anya ignores the flicker across his face. “That isn’t love! It wasn’t real!”

“It was to me!” Dmitry shouts.

The only noise in the silence that falls between them is their angry breathing, Anya’s heart pounding in her throat.

Then there’s nothing, because Anya’s grabbing his shirt and Dmitry’s pushing her up onto the ceramic countertop, his mouth searing hot against hers.

She hates him, Anya thinks, while her husband's hands slide under her shirt. She hates him almost as much as she loves him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, i lied, this was a Fast update all things considered.
> 
> no, i’m not ready for this fic to be over.

Dmitry spends two days relearning Anya’s body.

He sends a one handed email to the three other people at his workshop assuring them they’ll be paid in his absence, then tosses his phone aside to get his mouth between her thighs.

The kitchen feels like a fever dream, so intense it bordered on violent, biting kisses and bruising holds, her fingers fumbling with his belt and his hands everywhere, under her shirt, over her breasts, unhooking her bra and scrambling to push down her jeans.

She still feels the same, _sounds_ the same - when he’s inside her, when she’s on top of him, the heat of her mouth around him, the blissed look on her face when they’ve both come - all unchanged.

She still feels like home, still fits against him seamlessly.

Dmitry wonders if Anya’s thinking of the man left in Paris while he’s fucking her, a thought that irritates him so much he sucks a fresh trail of bruises in the valley between her breasts. She moans _Dima_ like a prayer, nails leaving crescent marks over his arms.

The week they got married, they’d christened every room in this house, young and insatiable and on the fringes of desperation.

 _History doesn’t repeat itself_ , he thinks as Anya rolls her hips down slowly, mouths tiredly at his jaw. _But sometimes it rhymes_.

“Who else?” Anya asks at some point, either very late at night or very early in the morning. They’re lying on their sides, his hand moving between her legs, her shallow breath against his collarbone.

Dmitry brushes their lips together. “What?”

“Who else have you had in this bed?” She’s baiting him, head tilted back and eyes bright.

Dmitry bites the inside of his cheek, swipes his thumb over the side of her clit. “Really want me to answer that?”

Anya keens, bucks into his palm and tightens around his fingers. “No.” She pulls him back on top of her, and they don’t say another word for hours.

He knows this is a mistake, knows they can’t stay in this bed forever and avoid everything they’re not talking about. But he looks at Anya sleeping beside him, muses the two silver wedding bands gathering dust in his bedside table.

Not fully awake, she burrows into his arms, and it could be five, six, seven years ago, could be back in the hospital during the fortnight after her whole family were slaughtered, her hiccuping sobs against his neck and his hands stroking her hair.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers like a reflex, “I’m right here.”

Dmitry didn’t realise she still had nightmares. Coming back here couldn’t have helped.

Two days. Two days is all it took for her to turn his world upside down, making everything he’d pushed down come rushing back to the surface, putting her back in his bed that they’d once shared.

Hunger is what finally persuades him out of bed, every bone in his body aching. Examining himself in the bathroom mirror, Dmitry gets a sense of dèjà vu; covered in bruises and bite marks, sporting a five o’clock shadow, hair a state, looking thoroughly well-fucked.

He looks over Anya quietly as he gets dressed, strawberry-blonde hair tangled across the pillow and naked body barely covered by the comforter. Still asleep, she leans into his hand brushing over her forehead.

He doesn’t want to admit he’s missed her, even now.

* * *

It’s snowing outside again.

It snowed on their wedding day. Snowed the night she left.

Dmitry demolishes two apples while he tidies the mess they left behind, tosses the remnants of Anya’s clothing into the washing machine along with his own. He lets himself be distracted cleaning until he glances at his forgotten phone and sees the number of missed calls from one person.

“Mitya,” Lily’s scolding him immediately after picking up at the first ring. “Where have you been? I was ready to send out a search party.”

“I'm sorry, _tetushka_ ,” he chuckles, slipping into Russian easily. “Wouldn’t have gotten very far, I've been home.”

“With Anastasia.” It’s not a question.

Dmitry winces, ready for an earful. “Yes.”

“Dmitry...”

“I know, I know, don’t start, please.” He rubs a hand over his face despairingly.

“You wouldn’t listen anyway, my boy.” She pauses, and Dmitry can feel the conflict in her silence. Lily’s fatal flaw is that she cares about Anya, too, no matter how much she resents what Anya did to him. “I just want you to be careful, _moya lyubov_ ,” she says gently. “She has not made it easy.”

“I haven’t exactly made it easy for myself, either, Lily,” Dmitry argues. “It’s not all her fault.”

“Still. The two of you,” Lily sighs, and Dmitry can picture her gesturing in irritation.

“I know,” he says, because he does. “I keep wondering what Vlad would think.”

Lily laughs. “He would be unbearable, trying to get the two of you together again.”

“Don’t pretend he wouldn’t rope you into it, too!”

“Most certainly,” Lily says sadly. “But he’d be proud of you no matter what, Dmitry, never mind Anya. You understand?”

Dmitry swallows around a lump in his throat. “I do. Thank you.”

Lily’s not his mother, he’s never called her that and she’s never considered herself to be - but she and Vlad raised him when he lost everything, helped him through the awkward teenage years, steadied him in the wake of Anya leaving. After Vlad died, so suddenly, Dmitry had temporarily moved back into that red house for both their sakes, had let himself break down in Lily’s sitting room because it had finally become too much.

Lily held him through all of it, and Dmitry loves her for it.

“So, are you going to sign the papers?” She asks now, breaking Dmitry’s train of thought.

He glances on top of the microwave where he’d cast the envelope. “It’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?”

“For you or her?”

“Both.” Dmitry sighs shakily. “Listen, can I call you back? I - we have a lot to do today.”

Lily laughs dryly. “You can call me anytime, Mitya.”

“ _Lyublyu vas_ ,” he says softly.

Lily’s voice is warm in answer. “ _I ya tebya lyublyu_.”

After she says goodbye, Dmitry begrudgingly reads over the papers.

**JOINT COMPLAINT, PETITION, OR DECLARATION FOR SIMPLIFIED DIVORCE.**

_We, Dmitry Constantinovich Sudayev [Husband], and Anastasia Nikolaevna Sudayev (nèe Romanov) [Wife], make the following statements;_

  1. _We both are requesting a dissolution of our marriage..._



He slams the file closed again with a groan.

Deep down, Dmitry knows he’s being an ass about it. He should just sign the damn papers and send Anya on her merry way - should let himself move on.

Hell, he’d almost sold this house - the house Anya picked and decorated herself - about a thousand times, always backing out at the last second.

He thought _she_ had moved on, before the last two days. Perhaps they just needed to get each other out of their respective systems.

But there’s a part of him that’s enjoyed the petty revenge, enjoyed watching Anya finally see the consequences of her own actions, enjoyed their verbal sparring.

He has missed her.

Lord, what would his father think of him? Stalling his whole life for a girl who left him behind.

Maybe it hadn’t been real, not really. Dmitry’s always known he was Anya’s safety-net after what happened to her parents and siblings - a knee-jerk decision made by two stupid kids, as Gleb had once put it so eloquently. He knew their facade of happiness would have blown up in their faces eventually, that they had been far too young to make such a big decision.

But he had thought, hoped, that when they made it to the other side, she’d still want him. Still love him. And yet here she had shown up, five years later, telling him it wasn’t real.

His small hurricane of a wife - who left him without a word then or since, leaving Vlad and Lily the responsibility of helping pick up the pieces of Dmitry’s shattered spirit - showing up and shaking everything down, demanding a divorce. He thinks he’s entitled to be angry, to want the answers she denied him back then.

And yet the one knotted, painful fact of the matter is that Dmitry loved her. Loves. Still loves her.

It doesn’t even shock him. He made peace with loving who he could never have a long time ago - no matter who else took his interest, how much he’s tried to dull it. The second she materialised in front of him four days ago, he knew.

Dmitry thinks he’s loved her since he was ten years old and she’d first grabbed his hand, hastily begging him to hide her from her sisters. Sisters and brother who were his _friends,_ too, who he misses more than he can ever say. Olga with her quick wit, Tatiana's stern eyes, Maria being the only one who bested him at poker, Alexei and his boyish grin, trying so hard to be like other boys his age while so coddled by his parents.

And Anastasia, the wretched little imp. Who raged as deeply as she cared, rebelled because she could, and had it all taken away from her in one fell swoop.

Even now, Dmitry is haunted by the shell she became in the year after the deaths, would look at the scars healing on her wrists every day just to make sure. Their marriage didn’t snap her out of it, didn’t fix her - it made her worse, he can see that now. Sometimes he wonders what would have happened had he said no when she asked him. Probably would have saved them both a world of hurt.

Goosebumps raise over his skin when he steps out onto the back porch, lighting one of Vlad’s old cigars.

He should have told her about Vlad, Dmitry silently admits to himself, watching snow settle on the grass - she did have a right to know. Maybe it would have brought her home sooner. Maybe they could have worked something out then.

Flicking ash over the deck, he grimaces. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It’s all far too late.

He hears Anya behind him before he sees her, pans clanging and padded footsteps over tile. Dmitry stubs out the cigar before she opens the door - she never liked him smoking.

Turning around, his throat goes dry seeing her wearing his red plaid shirt and a pair of his sweatpants that she’s rolled up to her ankles. His eyes linger on the dark marks on her neck.

She looks vaguely bashful coming to sit beside him, blinis and tea in hand, hair freshly washed and smelling of his lemongrass soap. He lets Anya inhale most of the blinis, crumbs littered between them. It’s not _tense_ , just odd. Neither of them say anything for a while, the last two days hanging between them.

The tea is just the way he likes it - not too strong, sweetened with half a teaspoon of honey. Of course she remembered.

He wants to put an arm around her, a hand on her leg, _something_ \- but he doesn’t know what the boundaries are now. The sex haze has broken, it’s time to face reality.

“You still have nightmares,” Dmitry blurts out after almost a quarter of an hour of silence. Anya’s got a throw blanket over her legs and bare feet, tucked it under her chin.

She raises her eyebrows at his choice of topic, but shrugs. “Not usually. I have - pills to sleep, but I left them at…” she trails off, hastily clears her throat. “Normally only catch a few hours, anyway.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” Silence settles between them again until Anya exhales. “You followed me to Paris.”

Dmitry snaps his head up at her, startled. He’s about to ask how she could possibly know that before it dawns on him. “Lily.”

Anya just nods, offers a tight-lipped smile.

He huffs, looking away. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

“Because that place wasn’t something I was ready for, Anyok.” He sighs, sits back so their shoulders knock together. “I thought - I thought you just needed space - a _lot_ of space - and would come back when you were ready.” He pauses. “Wasn’t totally wrong.”

Anya’s hand finds the crook of his elbow, cautious. “Would you have come with me,” she says quietly, “if I’d asked?”

 _Yes_. It frightens Dmitry how fast the answer comes to him. “I don’t know,” he tells her instead.

Anya allows him the lie.

“Your boats,” she diverts. “They’re beautiful. Alexei’s especially.”

Dmitry suddenly feels awkward. “I wanted to - honour them, some way. A way knew I knew how,” he says lamely.

Anya pats his arm. “You did. Thank you.”

They watch a fox dart across the grass at the end of the garden in a streak of red, dive under the fence and disappear. Anya’s breath fogs up in the air.

“Do you remember,” she starts, “when you talked us into going on that fishing trip up the creek, right before that blizzard?”

“You and Tanya drifted off course and got marooned on the river,” Dmitry suddenly recalls, laughing. Anya had sulked the entire way home, refusing to talk to him after he’d split his sides sailing out to rescue them.

“Tanya was the one sailing!” Anya insists now.

“So you claimed.” Dmitry grins when she shoves him.

“She was terrified of open water after that.”

“I know, we couldn't get her to go ice diving for months.” He fondly remembers Tatiana coming to watch the dive anyway, and Maria trying to push her in. “You were only stuck on the river a few hours, not like you were lost at sea.”

“That’s how it _felt_.” Anya leans against him, blue eyes sad when he looks down at her. “I miss them.” She whispers.

Dmitry hesitates for half a second before he kisses her forehead. “I know,” he murmurs into her hair. “I do, too.”

Anya doesn’t let the moment dwell, peering up at him. “Is there anyone else? Really?”

It startles a laugh out of Dmitry. “Not letting that go, okay.” He rolls his eyes. “There may have been - others.” Anya’s fingers twitch against his arm. “Never lasted, though. Either they find out about my estranged wife over in France, or they finally realised I wasn’t putting the work in for them.”

Anya squints. “What’d they say about me?”

“If you’re really asking did some of them think you were buried under the shed rather than living in Europe, I think you know the answer to that.”

Her laughter is warm against his arm before she pulls back to look at him for a long moment. “You’re a good person,” she says unexpectedly, pokes him in the ribs at his look of surprise. “No, listen, you _are_. I turned this house, our marriage, into a -“ she gestures, searching for a word.

“Coping mechanism?” Dmitry offers.

Anya snaps her fingers as an affirmative. “Right - real for as long as I needed it to be. We were a walking time-bomb, Dima.” It’s reminiscent of what she shouted at him the other night right before she kissed him. “I suppose part of me thought you’d understand.”

“I did.” Dmitry ducks his head. “Just don’t think I wanted to.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

“Anyok.” He looks up sharply, rests a hand on her thigh. “No, that’s - not it. I forgave you a long time ago.” Saying it out loud for the first time, he’s surprised to find that it’s true. “It’s myself I can't forgive.”

She’s frowning at him, bewildered. “What do you mean?”

Dmitry refuses to look away this time. “I’m not tied down here, really. I could have left, any time in the last five years - even Lily wants me to. There’s only so much I can blame you for.” He swallows. “It was just easier to be angry at you, than admit I was letting that anger be a reason to stay. Does that make sense?”

Anya is still staring at him, searching his face. “Sort of. Are you still angry?”

Dmitry feels himself deflate. “Not as much. Not right now.”

She chews her lip, pulls her arm from around his and takes his hand. “If it means anything, now - I’m sorry, Dima. I’m so sorry. For everything.”

Dmitry says nothing, just shuts his eyes and squeezes her hand.

“I’m not marrying James.”

Anya’s revelation makes his eyes snap open. “What? Why not?”

Her eyes go heavenward, exasperated. “I just spent two days cheating on him, Dmitry. And it wouldn’t be fair, anyway.” She pokes her tongue between her teeth, her anxious tell. “I don’t love him, not like that.”

Dmitry’s stomach plummets, unasked question burning his throat. He clears it hastily, takes one moment of stupid bravery and runs with it.

“Do you think, if you’d stayed - it ever would have worked...” He can’t finish.

Anya smiles sadly. “I don’t know,” she tells him honestly. “But I don’t think I’m ready to let you go so quickly this time.”

He nods, taps his finger against her thigh. “So what now?”

She leans forward again, sighing. “A flight back to Paris, I guess. Drop a bomb on my life and pick up the pieces.”

“Seems reasonable,” he says mildly.

Ayna snorts, shoves him in the ribs. “Shut up.”

“Okay.” Dmitry grins.

“Okay.” she repeats, softer. There’s a pregnant pause as they stare at each other.

He doesn’t know who moves first, just that they’re kissing again. It’s not as desperate or consuming as two night ago; it’s quiet and gentle, his hand curved over her cheek, palm warm from the cup. Their noses bump together pulling away, but he can’t not kiss her twice more anyway.

Thumb brushing under her eye, her fingers looped around his wrist. It feels like a goodbye.

 _Another lifetime_ , Dmitry thinks. When he’s not so angry and she’s finally worked out what she wants.

“Stay. Just tonight. Please.” He asks, begs. “I’ll drive you anywhere tomorrow.”

Anya presses their foreheads together, eyes damp. “I wanted you to ask me that five years ago, you know.”

Dmitry brushes his thumb over the corner of her mouth. “I should have told you to.”

* * *

When he signs the papers, it doesn’t feel like an ending - it feels like a new start for both of them.

Nine days after Anya leaves, Dmitry is sent a divorce verification receipt.

 _A receipt?_ He texts her the morning he gets it. _What, so I can take it back?_

Anya sends him an eye roll emoji and yellow heart in response, and later a photo of her grandmother's dog.

The most he knows right now is that she’s left James and moved in with Sophie. She promises to fill him in once the initial tidal wave of shock and explanations have died down.

“I should have come with you,” Dmitry grumbles over the phone, eleven day after.

“No, you shouldn’t,” Anya sighs, “not unless you want to be pulled to pieces by angry Romanov women _and_ my grandmother.”

“I think I can take her,” he affirms, and it’s the first time she laughs in over a week.

Two weeks later, he puts the house up for sale.


	7. Chapter 7: epilogue / one year later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took way longer than it should have to write, mainly because i'm in denial about it ending.
> 
> with all that's happened recently, this fic has been my happy escape, and i've had so much fun planning and writing it. thank you to all of you who have read, commented and left kudos. it's been a joy.
> 
> i’m on tumblr at piecesofgcld if any of you want to yell/cry/talk to me about dimya.
> 
> stay safe, look out for one another, wash your hands.
> 
> thank you and enjoy! <3

“Marmie. Marmie, _no_.” Dmitry scrambles from his kitchen to get the orange cat off his keyboard.

Anya’s voice tinkers from his laptop, bemused. “I still can’t believe you called your cat _Marmalade_.”

He pulls a face at her, Marmalade clawing at his arm until he sets her down. “Marfa said a Russian name was too cliche.”

Anya yawns. “Well, she’s not wrong.”

“I’m sorry, which one of us had a dog called Pooka?” He pauses seeing Anya rub her eyes, remembering the five hour time difference. “Hey, I can call you back tomorrow.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Anya shakes herself, sitting up in bed. “Please, tell me more about clients not understanding prototype designs.”

Their days have been like this for the last eight months, since Dmitry packed his life up and moved to New York - which is _not_ south central Alaska, he quickly learned. His first week here he’d very nearly gotten the first flights back to Fox River in sheer panic, both Anya and Lily having to talk him off several metaphorical ledges.

He _left_ , though - sold his boats, half his share of the workshop, traded in his battered blue truck for a silver Hyundai that he rarely finds himself using in favour of the subway, finally put his engineering degree into use, and may have been to more than one broadway show.

Rescuing Marmalade from the shelter was done on the advice of his therapist. Dmitry can’t say it was a bad call.

Their whole lives have been made up of ghosts and graveyards - Anya did have the right idea to leave, even if she went about it the wrong way. It was far past time he left, too.

Anya’s moving this week, decided to work from the New York design offices instead of Paris. She’ll be in the apartment complex adjacent to his. Dmitry can see her balcony from his own, has spent more than one night staring at it and wondering what seeing her in person for the first time in a year will be like, outside of all the facetiming and phone calls they’ve accumulated over the year.

Most of Anya’s fixtures arrive before her, Dmitry in charge of seeing it unloaded.

“You the husband?” One of the tired looking movers asks him, far too early in the morning.

“Ex-husband,” Dmitry automatically corrects, waving off their looks of confusion. “Long story. This way, gents.”

He misses the quiet of Fox River - his boats, the Aurora Borealis, even the cold. And the food. Especially the food.

“They don’t even have proper salmon here,” he’d complained sometime during the first month. “It’s blasphemous.”

“It’s _fish_.” Anya rolled her eyes. “And it’s only edible the way you make it.”

“ _Salmon_ , Anya.”

Her laughter was a windchime. “Ask Lily or Gleb to smuggle you some when they visit, idiot.”

You can take a boy out of Alaska, and all that.

Dmitry misses all those things, every day, but he’s learning to live without them.

He spends a lot of time wandering through Little Odessa, soothed by the familiar language and food. Even finds himself standing in front of a synagogue for the first time since he was twelve, too skittish to go in.

His mother had clung tightly to her faith all her life, and his father had continued to light a Menorah every December in her memory. Dmitry can’t say he did the same after his father died, too young and too angry at the world for taking them both away from him. But he taps the cover of his mother’s Torah that he'd pretended not to notice Lily packing, so battered the pages are falling out, and wonders if his mother will forgive him for the late start.

Being friends with Anya is decidedly easier than being married to her, he’s finding. Though he's not sure how that’ll change when she gets here, how long they’ll keep calling themselves friends until they’re not anymore, until they slide into old habits - easy as remembering how to ride a bike.

There’s an inevitability to it, but it’s not daunting. It’s oddly assuring.

Because who else could it ever be, really?

“By the way,” she’s saying now, pointing a pesto-covered fork at him through the camera. “A little birdie told me you went on a date the other night.”

“Is the little birdie’s name Lily, by any chance?” Dmitry asks, scratching behind Marmalade’s ears.

“Polly, actually. And she says thank you for what you sent to Lena.” She gestures hastily. “Anyway. Date. Tell.”

“Anya.”

“I am - taking an interest!” She insists. “Communication!”

“It was fine,” Dmitry appeases. “Just - fine. Doubt I’ll be seeing her again, though.”

Anya raises her eyebrows but says nothing.

“You know,” he says carefully. “It’d be our ninth anniversary soon.”

They’ve not really discussed the divorce at length, more something they ought to talk about in person. This is testing the waters.

He watches Anya take a gulp of wine, considering. “I’ll bring you a cake,” she offers eventually.

Dmitry snorts, shaking his head.

* * *

Arrivals at JFK have no business being so hectic. Dmitry curses under his breath, ducking beside a pillar to glare at his phone.

 _Who names an airport after an assassinated president???_ Is the text he’d sent Anya last night. _That’s just asking to be jinxed._

 _do i need to bring up the boats_ , she’d replied, deadpan tone apparent.

Okay, yes, fair point.

Her flight itinerary is attached afterwards - he’d found himself staring at it all morning, anticipation and foreboding all at once.

Dmitry’s about to type _Where are you?_ , when someone takes his hand.

He’s ten years old, standing on the street in a small Alaskan town and a pretty girl grabs his hand.

He’s twenty-eight years old, standing in an airport in New York City, and a woman with eyes the colour of the Fox River in summer makes him turn.

Dmitry’s throat goes dry, fingers involuntarily tightening around hers. He stares at her, jet-lagged and lovely, for a second too long before he catches himself.

“Hi,” is all he can say, heart in his throat, in her hands.

And Anya smiles.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [time is taking its sweet time erasing you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24397300) by [ivyrobinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/pseuds/ivyrobinson)




End file.
